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A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.

Central Accusations and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.

Cardia drew many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.

“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said her legal representative, the attorney.

Background and Related Events

Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.

The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.